Using motorhome as a battery bank / storage at home

[G1969]

Can this be done/ does anyone do this?

I have 560ah parked on the drive, is it possible to utilise this to store and use cheap off peak electric and feed back into the house?

 

[Jimbohorlicks]

Why not use it to power a few appliances in your house.

 

[G1969]

Why not use it to power a few appliances in your house.

Yes this is what I was thinking, but making it automatic? But I presume some facy kit ( if allowed) would be needed?

 

[pappajohn]

You will need a reasonably large inverter and a separate circuit for power and lights.
But to get 1 amp (240watts) at 240v from the inverter will take 20 amps from the batteries

 

[Googlebot]

I use mine like this.

Charge it overnight at 7p KWH on Octopus Intelligent tariff. I use a timer plug so it switches on when the cheaper rate cuts in and off when it goes up. In the summer, I don’t charge it at all as the solar fills it in a day. You have to be wary of the temps dropping as I don’t have temp protection on the mains charger. I just wait for solar to fill it when it’s very cold as it’s automatic and I won’t damage the lithium.

I then just use an extension lead into the garage that’s attached to the house for our tumble dryer.

It’s a modern heat pump one and draws a max of 700watts at 240v so suits our 1200VA inverter. With good solar, it’s free! Uses around 2KWH per cycle so saves 35p on the peak rate.

I only have 200AH of lithium which will do one cycle of the dryer. It works best when we have lots of drying, use the motorhome for one load then just delay start the next till the cheap rate.

I don’t think we plugged the dryer into the mains between May and August it works that well. We only have 350w of solar as well.

Convinced me that a solar array and battery storage in the house would be awesome.

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[Guigsy]

I think it might be handy to use electric cars this way. But the battery on your van is pretty small. You couldn't run the whole house from it as you wouldn't be able to deliver the peak current required. And I suspect the sockets to connect it up would be chunky and the setup would be expensive. As Googlebot mentioned, single appliances that you manually switch over is more manageable. Probably need to use it an awful lot to cover the costs though.

 

[G1969]

Thanks for the replies

 

[Pausim]

560Ah is 7.168 KWh or 7.168 Units of electricity. That means at the present price cap your battery is holding £1.76p of mains electricity when full and you will lose some of that in the inverter.

 

[Spriddler]

I don’t think we plugged the dryer into the mains between May and August

Neither did I since in that period I dry everything outside in the fresh air.

 

[Widge]

I think it might be handy to use electric cars this way. But the battery on your van is pretty small. You couldn't run the whole house from it as you wouldn't be able to deliver the peak current required. And I suspect the sockets to connect it up would be chunky and the setup would be expensive. As Googlebot mentioned, single appliances that you manually switch over is more manageable. Probably need to use it an awful lot to cover the costs though.

Search for ev bi directional chargers, they exist and you will also find that a variety of EV manufacturers support bi directional chargers.

My concern would be a potential reduction of battery life on the EV, also whether leasing companies would accept the idea, if leasing rather than buying an EV was your preferred option.

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[LithiumConvert]

Thought about it, but decided not to. The house system is esentially the same, but totally seperate.

 

[Two on Tour]

Can this be done/ does anyone do this?

I have 560ah parked on the drive, is it possible to utilise this to store and use cheap off peak electric and feed back into the house?

I asked the same question of the forum earlier this year, and basically the answers were no ....... but.

Can this be done ?

Our van lives at home and on a sunny day like today our lithium hab battery has been topped up and full for a few hours and now the output from our 400watts of solar on our van roof is going to waste, so my question is, can I switch on my inverter and plug it into a 13amp wall outlet in our...

www.motorhomefun.co.uk

 

[mikebeaches]

Search for ev bi directional chargers, they exist and you will also find that a variety of EV manufacturers support bi directional chargers.

My concern would be a potential reduction of battery life on the EV, also whether leasing companies would accept the idea, if leasing rather than buying an EV was your preferred option.

We do not have an EV, but do have a fairly large domestic solar PV set up (20 panels) and battery storage (13kWh). But I am vaguely interested in getting an electric car provided it supported V2H charging.

As I understand, bi-directional chargers are expensive and currently there are few suppliers, but it is something that has been on my radar for at least a couple of years. I'm really just waiting for the technology to become a bit more mainstream - progress seems surprisingly slow.

Having enjoyed the benefit of battery storage and understanding the benefit in a domestic environment, a suitable EV and bi-directional charger would be a game-changer for me and would help me over the line to buying an electric car.

https://www.indra.co.uk/v2h/

 

[mikebiggles]

I use mine like this.

Charge it overnight at 7p KWH on Octopus Intelligent tariff. I use a timer plug so it switches on when the cheaper rate cuts in and off when it goes up. In the summer, I don’t charge it at all as the solar fills it in a day. You have to be wary of the temps dropping as I don’t have temp protection on the mains charger. I just wait for solar to fill it when it’s very cold as it’s automatic and I won’t damage the lithium.

I then just use an extension lead into the garage that’s attached to the house for our tumble dryer.

It’s a modern heat pump one and draws a max of 700watts at 240v so suits our 1200VA inverter. With good solar, it’s free! Uses around 2KWH per cycle so saves 35p on the peak rate.

I only have 200AH of lithium which will do one cycle of the dryer. It works best when we have lots of drying, use the motorhome for one load then just delay start the next till the cheap rate.

I don’t think we plugged the dryer into the mains between May and August it works that well. We only have 350w of solar as well.

Convinced me that a solar array and battery storage in the house would be awesome.

Can confirm that solar panels and battery storage at home is the way to go - even with our weather.
Good reduction in electricity bill with an additional bonus of £150 SEG payment for my exported electricity.

 

[Widge]

We do not have an EV, but do have a fairly large domestic solar PV set up (20 panels) and battery storage (13kWh). But I am vaguely interested in getting an electric car provided it supported V2H charging.

As I understand, bi-directional chargers are expensive and currently there are few suppliers, but it is something that has been on my radar for at least a couple of years. I'm really just waiting for the technology to become a bit more mainstream - progress seems surprisingly slow.

Having enjoyed the benefit of battery storage and understanding the benefit in a domestic environment, a suitable EV and bi-directional charger would be a game-changer for me and would help me over the line to buying an electric car.

https://www.indra.co.uk/v2h/

Last year I watched a french broadcast regarding the power situation in france. One of the things that were being suggested was the possibility of using bi directional chargers as a way of providing grid power during peaks, most people especially in citys generaly don't need more than a 60% charge, so that would leave 40% available to supply the grid. If you know that you will need a full charge for any reason you will be able to override it.

Another demonstration during the program, to give people some impression of how much power we use, was to connect an exercise bike to a generator which in turn was connected to a toaster.

They had one of the top cyclists, who had thighs like tree trunks, he was only just able to provide enough power to cook two peices of toast, before he had to stop exhausted.

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